So much going on, a massive deadline I'm about to miss being the main reason that I've not written, as well as nightmare school applications (totally Kafkaesque - you pay 160 euros for each child to apply to a school for which they have to sit an exam and for which there are no places) and, of course, the house. 

I meant to have photos of windows to show you in detail what I've been going on about, but didn't get round to it. The house is so dusty that I'm not sure my camera even still works. (Also to please my blogging mentor, whose gentle criticism has been taken to heart). 

But things are looking up, after a weekend of worrying that I was losing my dignity, as well as betraying the house. I have found the windows I want! For the same price as the ones I don't want. A bit of pootling around on Google one night when I was feeling very low led me to a company that specialises in historically accurate windows. A man whose passion for history and architecture is such that he sometimes refuses to change windows if they have historical significance. And, almost unbelievably, the company is based about ten minutes from where we lived. I can't believe I hadn't found him before. 

The next day I called and couldn't stop myself blurting out how miserable I was about all the horrid shysters who had come to give me quotes for nasty windows that weren't going to look anything like the old windows.  I must have touched him because having said initially that he had no time to come for over a fortnight he then agreed to come on Monday afternoon. He walked around the house dating windows through their hinges and closures, pointing out the different styles of how the wood was carved, according to whether they were first Empire or Haussmanien. I was enthralled, and cautiously excited. After all if he cost twice what the others cost we just couldn't afford it. 

The next morning he called. When his name popped up on my mobile I started to shake, I was so afraid he was about to quote a sum so astronomical that there was simply no way we would be able to justify it. He gently suggested that I sit down, since I was going to be shocked - and then proceeded to quote a price that was literally fractionally more more than the other quotes I've got. I nearly burst into tears. 

He takes the metal closures from the old windows and puts them onto the new ones. He calls them the fingerprints of history.